I paced around for hours on empty, I jumped at the slightest of sounds

[mantlepieces]

WHO: REGGIE MANTLE and YOU.
WHERE: Around! Mostly Heropa & Maurtia Falls, but anywhere's fine.
WHEN: Throughout May.
WHAT: Reggie's secrets and internal crises have brought him to the precipice; will he continue down his self-destructive path, heedless of consequences, or will he finally start making real strides in his (thus far short-lived) efforts at being a better person? Will he even still be here next month?
WARNINGS: References to canon-typical death/violence/suicide ideation/zombies, possible mentions of underage drug use, drinking, self-harm, and/or sexual implications. Will ETA as necessary.

NOTE FOR CURRENT CR: In June Reggie will be canon-swapped with his counterpart from the TV show Riverdale, meaning this is the last month to play things out with this version of Reggie. If there's anything you'd like to work out in specific regarding CR closure and/or prepping for the transition, feel free to PM me or talk to me on plurk!


H E R O P A ✘ dead boy walking

( cw: suicidal ideation )

[ Uncanny to think Reggie's been here for years now... sometimes it's easier to accept, to just take the basic information and apply it to his reality -- yes, it's been years since I've been home, even my short-lived visit home was about a year ago by now -- whereas other times it seems too absurd to believe. How can Reggie be two years older than his classmates? How can it be he's alive here in some alternate universe when all of his friends are dead or may be dying back home at the hands of a relentless, vengeful zombie horde?

It doesn't make sense. He was the one who started it all, the one approached with a task in order to set things right again; if it could be fixed, it had to be him to do it. At least, that was the truth as far as Reggie knew it, both then and now.

He tries not to think about it, but also can't help it. Not always. The longer he stays the more intrusive the guilt and the memories become, to the point where if Reggie's able to sleep at all, he wakes up to the image of Sabrina... or Jughead, or Moose, or Midge, or Kevin, or even Archie reaching through the fabric of reality to put a hand on his shoulder. Sometimes his throat. He fears people can sense or even see what he's done written on his skin somehow, reflected in his eyes. Though alive, he feels more and more like a walking corpse himself every day that passes.

So, most nights lately in lieu of sleeping, Reggie's taken to going out and wandering... just walking (or sometimes even running), dark circles around his eyes and in yesterday's clothes, in any direction until he finds something to occupy his time and mind. Sometimes he just walks along roads in a semi-daze, occasionally forcing what few drivers are out in the middle of the night/early morning to swerve to avoid hitting him whenever he wanders off the shoulder, but even more often he ends up at the beach, staring dully at the dark water as if tempted by it. It's no more quiet out here than in his room at home, in his head -- not really -- but somehow being outside still seems to help more than the alternative.

If something happened to him out here, then at least people would know about it. ]

M A U R T I A ∎ F A L L S ✘ quote from man stabbed--

( cw: stabbing )

[ As awful a person Reggie often finds himself thinking he might be -- knowing that maybe he must be -- one thought he can't seem to shake entirely is if it has to be that way. Sure, he's been bad before, he's always been bad, but awful? Terrible? Irredeemable, even? Are those already concrete, immovable facts about him, set in stone no matter what he does, or are these still things he can change about himself?

And does he want to, is probably the better question-- but when it doesn't seem so pointless, an impossibly unattainable endeavor, Reggie thinks he does. He can live with being bad, but being a bad person is a different thing entirely. Kevin had seemed to think maybe there was still hope for Reggie, but after so long without seeing him -- or any friendly face that truly knew him -- the doubts once again slowly crept back out to devour Reggie alive.

It occurs to him sometimes, for example, how in retrospect he isn't quite sure Sabrina ever promised things would be fixed if he did what she wanted. You need to go back to your friends, you need to beg their forgiveness... and then you need to kill their hope... you need to kill Betty Cooper, Reggie, and then Midge will be yours forever. Not that he can always trust his memory, but this-- whenever he recalls it, the memory returns fully formed and intact like a movie clip. With so much time and space between him and that moment now, he's no longer sure it's what he wants. Is it noble? Is it evil? Does he want Midge at the expense of another life (and does he know she'd really want him back?)... and is he even capable of killing someone? He has the switchblade Sasha got for him on his last birthday practically burning a hole in his pocket, but it's never been used, not even in self-defense-- Reggie himself doesn't know if that's any testament toward goodness in him or just more proof that he's a coward.

It is, however, how he winds up getting stabbed. Not seriously, but-- Reggie discovers that no, he's not so sure he does have it in him to kill someone, when after accidentally-on-purpose provoking a fight with a couple of drunk locals outside a nightclub he remembers he has the knife and pulls it, in an attempt to intimidate them. Instead, it gets grabbed from him and he gets slashed across the cheek and in the shoulder before the drunks run off, leaving him there to shout and bleed. ]

Son of a-- oh my god, my face!

✘ W I L D C A R D ✘

[ Choose your own adventure! Feel free to tag in with your own starter if nothing above quite suits your needs, or PM/plurk me to work out a custom starter! ]

Comments

nsfw;

[pillz]

[those last five words make kavinsky laugh for some stupid awful reason. part of him doesn't believe the other boy— glad you're alive. well, kavinsky's sure that between the sex and endless supply of nefarious treats and goodies, he's worth having around, but all the love and fraternity that that line normally entails, he doubts there's any of that between them.

not that he cares.

he picks himself up, swivels himself over reggie so that he's kneeling in between the other boy's legs. he backs up a few inches, then hooks the waist of the other boy's pants with his fingers. yanks. hard enough to scoot reggie's newly-unzipped pants down his ass and groin, and also to pull the boy down the bed. kavinsky's head is down the next instant, taking reggie's cock in his mouth with the coarse expedience that comes with familiarity and entitlement. certainly!! how you'd like to be handled by your lover. (or not.)

but his mouth is warm and wet and willing, familiar. the flat of his tongue sleeking down the bottom of the shaft, the back of his throat crammed up against the head of reggie's sex without bothering with flirtation or crescendo.]